Harry Eats Balut

I was fortunate enough to have been asked on a date to the Harry Connick Jr. concert. I had been influenced to appreciate Harry Connick in high school by my then best friend Debbie Yu (and appropriately, the concert fell on her birthday!) so I was really excited to watch him perform live.

It was an amazing band - a whole dozen of them onstage - but the other highlight of the night for me was when he started on this long spiel on Filipino food appreciation from the perspective of a white man.

H: This is my first time in Manila and I must tell you, your country has the sweetest mangoes.

Cheers from the audience.

H: But this dessert called ... holla-holla?

Audience: Halo-halo!

H: Hallow-hallow? Yeah. That's just weird ....... Come on, you gotta admit it's just weird ... I mean, I understand the shaved ice. But when you put in the red beans and the corn, it's just confusing! You guys gotta make up your minds, is this dessert or is it the real meal. You know we don't mess with our gumbo.

(Audience really cracking up.)

H: And this ... balot? What is it, you just can't wait til the duck comes out? ... I'll tell you what. I have a dozen of these balots here. I am going to eat one for you.

(Wild cheers from audience)

H: You help me out (selects lady from audience). So tell me, how do I eat this?

Lady: You crack it open from one end but I'm not sure which end ...

H: Hold on, there are three words you said that I don't understand ... I'M NOT SURE ... Are you really from here?

L: Haha. Yes but there's supposed to be a specific side which you crack open, I'm not sure which.

(cracks open egg)

L: Now you sip the soup from the egg.

H: The egg's got soup in it?!

(Audience roflol. H sucks on egg.)

L: Now you open it completely.

(H moves to piano. Audience screams "Not on the piano!!!!!!" H moves away from piano and takes off the shell.)

H: This thing's got veins!

(Audience roflol. Harry puts whole thing in his mouth, asks for a Coke and downs it. Applause. Says thank you to lady. ... Starts playing again and singing while audience cheers. On the third line of the song he lets out a very loud BURP. Audience cracks up. H drops piano, walks to center stage.)

H: You guys want some balut?

A: Yes!

H throws one balut to a guy in the seventh row. Then another farther out. Another to the other side of the audience.

H: What about you guys up there?

H throws a balut to the balcony. But it HITS the balcony wall and the balut cracks open and falls ON some people in the audience below the wall.

H: This is ? (calls on a member of the band) and he's a great pitcher.

Band member throws balut again to balcony. Again it cracks open and falls.

Then they play some wild jazz while the audience is peeing in their pants laughing.